Brightpoint lands coveted Nokia business distie deal

The contract comes into force from today, with Brightpoint beating competition from Brightstar, Ingram Micro, Fone Logistics and I2.

The deal means that Brightpoint, formerly Hugh Symons Telecom, will lead Nokia’s move to develop business services in partnership with Cisco, Microsoft and IBM and take on RIM, the company behind Blackberry.

Brightpoint now has exclusive status to distribute Nokia’s business products, accessories and services and software.

Head of business mobility at Nokia UK, Adrian Williams, said: ‘During the tender process, Brightpoint demonstrated the highest level of understanding and commitment required to help support us in driving both traditional and non-traditional channels.’

Brightpoint had been most people’s favourite for the business distribution contract, ahead of IT distributor Ingram Micro and Brightstar. Brightpoint already has an exclusive supply deal with HTC.

American distribution giant Brightpoint bought Hugh Symons Telecom (HST) in March this year after a deal with owner Hugh Roper.

Nokia began its distribution shake-up a year ago. It was expected that the manufacturer would announce the business tender alongside the handset and accessories licences in July, when it revealed it would partner 20:20, Dextra and Data select. But at the time Nokia said that none of the responses met the elements required in the tender process.

Nokia CEO Simon Ainslie told Mobile in August 2008: ‘We set down very demanding criteria. We expected them to reflect our business strategy and we didn’t see it [in b2b distribution].’

Nokia has shaken out Unique, Fone Logistics, Kondor, Clockwork, and officially rejected the advances of new distributors such as Ingram Micro and Birghtstar through its distribution tendering process.